


Weathering

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Music RPF, Steely Dan (Band)
Genre: Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Recovery, Rehab, Sense of Peace, Separation, authenticity, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: Many storms had blown over the islands... weathering away the superficial. But distance and storms couldn't wear away the few authentic aspects of the world. [The other perspective of "When the Demon Does Not Leave the Door".]





	Weathering

**Author's Note:**

> During the Steely Dan 80s hiatus and Walter Becker's recovery period in Hawaii

The days of physical aching, fevers, weakness, and mental absence were the first to fade under the intense sun and intense weathering by sand of Maui.

Those were the things the world never saw. Nor was it ever intended to see or hear the detail and horror of. What was already over did not need to be met with misguided pity.

The tropical storms passed through, slowly, but surely. Eventually, the screaming winds stopped whipping the sand everywhere, and the flood water receded, leaving behind the typical, endless sun, calm breeze, and peaceful quiet. 

Anyone in the world in the path of _those_ storms saw and heard them, and surely, nature intended it to be that way.

The gold record hanging in the outhouse soon began to tarnish after the storm-driven sand tore away at the outer finish, exposing the impurities and cheaper components beneath. Maybe the world had heard about it, or seen such an award, but this one wasn't intended to be put on a shelf to boast to an audience.

It was just as superficial as the storm's weathering proved it to be. While it wouldn't last, what it represented would.

Mental clarity came back first.

A sense of wit was second, along with a reluctant admission of delight over its return. Life without that wit had been rather boring. It had been greatly missed, with a begrudging admittance of the fact.

A sense of peace was last to come -the one thing that wasn't a returning item, but a new arrival. Perhaps it wasn't peace as the world wanted to describe it, but it was one that functioned for its less glamorous form. Everything was fine as it was, screwed-up as it could be. 

What wasn't as it should be didn't always need to ferment into a bitter, scathing thought that burned wherever it passed. It could immediately be laughed off when it was seen fit, leaving the old method for the use of a darker sense of humor and creative purposes only.

Over the course of that sense slowly asserting and solidifying itself, the envelopes began to arrive from over forty-five hundred miles away, each marked with a small fortune of postage and a date nearly a month prior to its arrival.

There were the signatures on cocktail napkins, sometimes with notes and regards. None of which were needed, but nice to have -if for nothing else, but to know the small, old corner of the past world that was authentic still existed, whether or not it was smiling like before.

Then there were the short notes. All were of few words, and let on very little. Some held a spark of hope, some held a snowstorm of depression that was snuffed out by the tropical air on arrival, and some held a dark edge that provoked the evil, scheming grin and thoughts to match that had survived every stage of falling and rising back up on recovery and would survive until the end of a lifetime.

Then there were the nearly illegible ones with the distinct pattern of a shaky hand and a pen that bled too much ink in one place and not enough in another. The pattern of anxiety and intoxication, and a peculiar sense of pain that settled and burned so that it felt good, even at its most intense levels.

_It's quite amusing, what so many will whimper and moan about. They have people in their lives who care enough to miss them in their absence. People who are worthy of missing in return by all accounts, and will wait for the chance to meet again. Oh, and it is in fact possible to happen someday. What a terrible thing to have such fortune through one's life. I should think they'd be glad for all their complaints._

The names from the signatures carrying the most intriguing of notes were the ones Walter committed to the memory of the now salt and sand-weathered pages of an old notebook. Only for the highly improbable case he would ever cross paths with their authors.

It was on the nights that carried a breeze without losing heat, with just enough humidity in the air to mock the stuffiness of a packed club, but not enough to bring on rain afterward, that he tossed the tattered napkins into the flames of a makeshift fire pit in the sand. 

The ashes rose with the wind, releasing the spirit of each's origin -a faint hint of chords somewhere in the atmosphere, played over banter, the knocking of glass on heavily-varnished wooden countertops, and the muffled sounds emerging on the street through fogged glass windows, holding the snowstorms outside.

And somewhere in it all was the sense of connection through the musical language -a connection distance couldn't shake, and one that would stay after all the physical evidence was burned away and the ashes were carried on the wind out over the sea.

Maybe some ocean current would eventually carry it to the banks of the New York waterways, to find its way back to the sender, carrying a sense of peace and long-lost wit that would complete the connection and eventually bring the possibility of meeting again. Someday.


End file.
